


Frontier Cadence

by manic_intent



Series: Frontier Cadence [1]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, M/M, postcanon, spoilers for the movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-28
Updated: 2016-09-28
Packaged: 2018-08-18 08:35:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8155859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: The revelation that he was in fact alive and in one piece came as a total surprise to Josh Faraday. Granted, this wasn’t in fact his first rodeo with certain-but-then-thwarted death, and as such, Faraday stared muzzily in a semi-drugged daze at the cracked ceiling for a long and puzzled moment before panic set in. He groped downwards. Nope. Dick still intact. Faraday relaxed. “It absolutely goddamned figured,” Goodnight said dryly somewhere to his left, “that you’d be worried about that first before everythin’ else.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> I LOVED this film. Granted, I love Westerns in general, but a shippy Western? YASS. 
> 
> ~~Also, idk if I'm being trolled again by wiki/etc, but Faraday is listed as "Josh Faraday" rather than "Joshua", so I left that in the fic... will change if things change. May watch film again and see.~~ Switched it to Faraday, easier for everyone. 
> 
> **Note** : Full spoilers for the film.

The revelation that he was in fact alive and in one piece came as a total surprise to Joshua Faraday. Granted, this wasn’t in fact his first rodeo with certain-but-then-thwarted death, and as such, Faraday stared muzzily in a semi-drugged daze at the cracked ceiling for a long and puzzled moment before panic set in. He groped downwards. Nope. Dick still intact. Faraday relaxed. 

“It absolutely goddamned figured,” Goodnight said dryly somewhere to his left, “that you’d be worried about _that_ first before everythin’ else.” 

“Friend, you have _no idea_ now many close shaves I’ve had,” Faraday said, blinking. His tongue felt thick, and when he turned to glance over at his current roommate, his shoulder throbbed with renewed agony. 

Goodnight listened to Faraday swear for five minutes straight before rolling his eyes. He was propped up in a narrow cot, dressed in a thin linen shirt, his ferret-like face overgrown with at least a few days’ worth of untrimmed beard, and his left arm and what was visible of his chest was heavily bandaged. They were in what looked like a hastily cleared out storeroom of some settler’s house, with crates still stacked up along the sides and a window that opened into a view of a wheat field.

“So we’re both above snakes,” Faraday said slowly, trying out the thought in his mind. “Still alive.”

“Oh, excellent. You, my friend, have achieved basic lucidity,” Goodnight raised his eyebrows. “You’re lucky that the preacher had a stash of laudanum, but it does appear to have had a lingering effect on your faculties.” 

“You, _my friend_ , be givin’ me a real headache,” Faraday shot back, if halfheartedly. “How did it all go? Did we win? Everyone come out all right?” 

“We lost Horne,” Goodnight said soberly. “Found him peppered with arrows. Was a close call for Billy and I—when I saw them turn the Gatlin’ towards the church tower I knew we had to get out of there. Barely cleared the trapdoor in time, but some stray shells caught me on the way down. Everyone else’s a little bruised and dinged up in places, but they’re fine.” 

“That’s… good,” Faraday decided, cheered up. “Did we get Bogue?”

“Yes indeed. I gather it was Mrs Cullen who got the kill. Chisolm didn’t elaborate and neither has she been inclined to. Chisolm stayed long enough to make sure we were gonna get help, then he rode off into the sunset with the Comanche, so I've been told. I’m not entirely sure, I wasn’t awake at the time.” 

Faraday thought this over for a long moment, again staring at the ceiling. “Well fuck me sideways and call me a leprechaun. We _won_? I don’t even understand how we won and we won. I mean, I was hopin’ that we would, which was why I went and charged that big gun of theirs, but I didn’t actually think that we would. Did I make it look good? Did you see it? I blew up that Gatlin’ with dynamite, you should’a seen it. C’mon, you can tell me. I made it look good, didn’t I?”

“I think I preferred it when you were unconscious,” Goodnight told him severely, and abruptly glanced over at the door. 

Faraday didn’t hear a step, but after a moment, the door was nudged open, and Billy sidled in, soft-footed as a cat, balancing a tray with a bowl of soup and a cup of water. He shot Faraday a narrow-eyed, assessing look, then set the tray down on the side table beside Goodnight’s bed. 

“Hey, where’s mine?” Faraday protested, as Goodnight closed the book and picked up the bowl. 

Billy shrugged, settling down on the edge of the bed, nudged against Goodnight’s knee with casual intimacy as he moved the cup off the tray. When he noticed Faraday staring, Billy frowned at him, but still said nothing. The slender, compact Asian man was also dressed down: no jacket or vest or riding boots, though he was still wearing his belt of knives, the silver hairpin caught through his knot of thick black hair. 

“Go get him somethin’ please,” Goodnight patted Billy’s thigh. “Or he’s going to bitch our ears off.” 

Billy fingered the hilt of one of the slender knives slung around his hips. “ _Or_ he could have an accident,” he said, his accent cutting an extra edge to his tone. 

“That’s really not a friendly thing to say,” Faraday said sadly, “After we’ve shared so many trials and tribulations and things. I genuinely thought I had somethin’ going on there with all of you guys. Right when I told you the names of my girls.” 

Billy exchanged a long-suffering glance with Goodnight, who gave him a half-shake of his head. With a loud sigh, Billy got to his feet and let himself out of the room. Goodnight started to eat, and whatever it was, it smelled warm and meaty enough for Faraday’s mouth to water. “He’ll get you yours,” Goodnight assured him, chuckling, as Faraday’s stomach rumbled in agreement. “Mrs Cullen has been real generous with her hospitality.”

“His name’s not really ‘Billy’, is it?” Faraday asked, still bleary. “I mean. ‘Billy Rocks’? That’s a fake name if I seen one. Nearly as fake-soundin’ as ‘Goodnight Robicheaux’, though I’m pretty sure that’s your real name. My condolences, honestly.” 

Goodnight sighed. “This was my grandfather’s name, rest his soul. As to Billy, neither of us would be capable of pronouncing his real name. So ‘Billy’ it is. Maybe we shouldn’t have given you laudanum. You do seem to be having quite a reaction.” 

Faraday ignored him. “How’d an ex-Confederate soldier become best friends with a Chinese man?”

“He’s not Chinese. He’s Korean. If you know where Korea is.” 

“Nope,” Faraday admitted cheerfully, having never, in rain or shine, been ever embarrassed over conceding ignorance. “But so what’s the deal? Fifteen years back, you guys try and set up your own country ‘cos you think black people are property. Wind up to now and I seen you takin’ orders from a black man and bein’ best friends with 'nother coloured guy. Somethin’ happened? You hit your head real hard and seen the light?” 

Goodnight didn’t answer, concentrating on his soup, and just as Faraday was starting to doze off, he murmured, “I didn’t fight because of any high-minded ideals. That was the problem. I fought because my neighbors, my father, my brother were all fighting. I went along with it without thinkin’. After the war, I swore that was the last time I would ever do somethin’ like that again. Tried to get educated. Expand the mind. I seen things done in the war…” Goodnight trailed off, grimacing. 

“So that’s it?” Faraday said skeptically. “You woke up one day and didn’t wanna be a slaver no more?” 

“It started with me owing Chisolm my life,” Goodnight said, a little stiffly. “And the rest of it ain’t any of your business.” 

Faraday was going to keep poking at it, but at that moment Billy slipped back into the room, another tray of soup in hand, though his silent, graceful re-entry was spoiled by Vasquez, who swaggered in loudly behind him, grinning broadly, thumbs hooked in his belt. “So I see you are not dead,” Vasquez told Faraday. “Pity. I had money on another outcome.”

“That’ll teach you to bet against me.” Faraday struggled to sit up, grimacing against the pain, and after a moment, Vasquez helped, arranging him against the pillow with surprising gentleness. “How’s my favourite texican? Looks like you got off lightly. After I saved the day, of course.”

“I told you, _pendejo_ , no such thing as a texican,” Vasquez tried to scowl, though he ended up grinning again as he slapped Faraday against the shoulder, just close enough to one of his gunshot wounds to make him flinch and yelp. “Pity they didn’t shoot you in the mouth, no? You talk more than ever.”

“You’d miss me if I didn’t,” Faraday retorted, and after a few fumbling moments, managed to get the bowl and spoon cradled against his chest without spilling everything. By the doorway, Emma Cullen peeked in, her hands dusty with flour, still wearing an apron over her frock. She smiled faintly as he nodded at her. “Ma’am. This soup is _great_.”

“Can’t take credit for it, Mister Faraday. This is all Billy’s work.” 

“I helped,” Vasquez protested. 

“You stole some until I threatened to shoot you,” Billy muttered, even as he took the empty bowl and spoon from Goodnight and set it back on the tray, heading out of the room.

“I was _tasting_. Tasting very important job.” Vasquez looked injured as Billy pointedly squeezed past and out of sight. He followed, still protesting, if in Spanish, and Emma shook her head slowly, chuckling. 

“Thanks for takin’ us in,” Faraday told her, hazarding a guess. 

“This is a big house now that my husband’s gone,” Emma disagreed. “And besides. You gentlemen have done what we paid you for and far more. Thank you again. All of you.” 

“Nothin’ to it,” Faraday said breezily, and winked, because he wasn’t beyond bragging where a beautiful woman was involved. Emma didn’t grow flustered, or blush or even react—she nodded at him absently and ducked out of the doorway. Faraday let out a sigh. Maybe he was starting to lose it. 

“She _is_ recently widowed,” Goodnight said mildly, almost startling Faraday into upsetting the soup over his knees. 

About to say something snide about stating the obvious, Faraday swallowed it instead as Billy reappeared with the same ghostlike silence, this time folding himself down further up the bed, flush against Goodnight’s hip. Billy bent to whisper something into Goodnight’s ear that made Goodnight chuckle and make a flicking gesture in return, a lovers’ world of private signals. Carefully, Faraday set his bowl aside as quietly as possible, closing his eyes, a little embarrassed to even be present. He wasn’t sure how he had missed this before.

#

Goodnight felt a little wistful leaving Rose Creek in their dust, and he kept glancing back over his shoulder, long after the little town and the Cullen farm had disappeared out of sight. Beside him, Billy had Rose Creek’s sole copy of the Times carefully folded over his pommel, laboriously reading the headlines. Literacy had come late to Billy’s life, and only with Goodnight’s persistence.

“We could have stayed longer,” Billy said, without looking up. 

“Always decamp from the premises while they’d all still miss you. Besides, one week more of Faraday’s company and I’d probably have seriously considered committing murder.”

“Only ‘seriously’?” Billy sniffed. “I was past that point eight days ago. Faraday is a very annoying man.” 

“He does have a profound effect on people,” Goodnight said generously. 

“He is an idiot.”

“I wouldn’t go that far. Bit of a blatherskite, that’s for sure. But he’s not a bad chap. Doesn’t lack for courage, what with charging that Gatlin’ single-handedly. Great shot, too.”

Billy shook his head, silent. It was a breed of graceful quiet that Goodnight had grown used to, around Billy. He had warmed up to it over time too, once he’d finally figured that it wasn’t that Billy had nothing to say to him, but that for Billy, just being _with_ Goodnight was good enough, that they fit together so neatly that anything outside of silence was a complication that wasn’t always necessary. 

And yet Goodnight _had_ , albeit temporarily, abandoned Billy to what would’ve been a violent death. It had burned him to leave, but then, in the dead of night, his demons had seemed far too close at his heels. He hadn’t even had the courage, then, to _tell_ Billy that he was leaving—though he figured that Billy had guessed anyway. Normally, Billy was always close at hand, a quiet shadow that Goodnight had grown used to. That evening, he’d made himself scarce. 

All that bloodshed hadn’t had the effect that Goodnight had thought it would, nohow. He’d slept easier these few days, even with the blood on his hands and so much death in their wake. Somehow, the demons were lagging behind, close, but further than they had been before Rose Creek, the bad dreams, the hair-trigger memories, the anxiety. Life was often strange that way.

They made camp tucked away under a rock outcrop, horses tethered to shaggy trees. Mrs Cullen had packed them travel rations: some bread, some cheese, a smoked side of ham—a fine dinner for the road. Afterwards, Billy set down his sleeping bag beside Goodnight’s, and bit out a yelp as Goodnight dragged him down, fingers curled in his collar. Somehow, Billy managed to avoid knocking into any of Goodnight’s still-healing wounds, and he frowned down at Goodnight, knees pressed against Goodnight’s hips. 

“You’ll reopen your stitches.” Billy told him, though he let Goodnight unbutton his shirt, notch by notch, let Goodnight skate fingertips up over his throat to the faint scar just against his collarbone. 

“Not if you do all the work,” Goodnight pointed out hopefully. This got a laugh, the first that Goodnight had heard from Billy since he’d woken up, delirious from infection and strung up in bandages, Billy’s grave, pale face swimming in and out of his sight. 

Fingers picked at his belt buckle, undoing it nimbly, and their noses bumped as Goodnight leaned carefully up onto his elbows for a kiss that seemed to startle Billy, making him jerk and tense up, then he folded a groan against Goodnight’s mouth, a tremor shaking through him. “Hey,” Goodnight said softly, making a guess. “S’all right. I’m here.” 

“Saw the bullets hit you,” Billy muttered, and touched his fingertips lightly to the edge of Goodnight’s shoulder bandage. “A little closer and—”

“You know me. I’m lucky.” Goodnight brushed a kiss against the edge of Billy’s mouth, then he nipped, catching Billy’s lower lip in his teeth. Billy groaned again, this time more urgently, riding up against the thigh that Goodnight pressed between his legs, then he was edging down, unbuttoning breeches, navigating the buttons on the union suit underneath. Goodnight tugged restlessly at Billy’s shoulders until he slipped up for a kiss, lingering and slow and lazy until those nimble, clever fingers closed teasingly over Goodnight’s cock, _dry_ , but Goodnight still choked on a gasp and bucked up for it and ended up wincing and sinking back for his trouble. 

Billy frowned at him, though he relaxed when Goodnight caught his wrist, holding his hand in place. “This is really not going to be good for you.” 

“Let _me_ decide what’s going to be good for me.” This got him a sigh, but Billy spat in his palm and started to stroke him, slow and easy, squeezing tight at the base and nudging up to the dark circumcision scar, following up with his tongue, the tease. Goodnight dug his heels against the bedroll and curled his fingers into Billy’s hair, careless, the way Billy liked it, when he knocked the twists into disarray and the hairpin off kilter. “C’mon,” Goodnight grit out, desperation fed urgent by days of waiting and stolen moments. “ _C’mon_.”

Billy laughed again, and slowed down, licking teasingly at the tip, the scar, hand nudging up and down only as an afterthought, nowhere enough pressure, enough _anything_. Goodnight cursed at him in garbled coughs, wincing whenever he tried to shove up into Billy’s grip, into his goddamned smug smirking mouth. And Billy—hell, sometimes Billy could be a complete prick by any measure of the word. He was letting Goodnight squirm and writhe and _enjoying it_. 

“Takin’ advantage of an unwell man,” Goodnight complained. “Ain’t kind of you.” 

Billy pulled a face at him, but obliged, finally _yes_ swallowing, God, that tight, wet throat, those knife-roughened gunslinger fingers, squeezing tight over whatever was left, and that tiny keening little groan Billy always made whenever his mouth was stuffed full like this, as though he wanted to get more down his throat. Like there was nothing else he’d rather be doing. Goodnight slapped one palm down on the bedroll and clenched the other in Billy’s hair and hissed as he felt a moan string up along his cock. It got messy after that, even though Billy held him down, careful of his wounds. Goodnight was too close to really enjoy this, too exhilarated. They were alive, alone together. _Alive_. 

“Billy,” Goodnight gasped, “goddamn, _Billy_ ,” in a constant broken litany that cracked when he fumbled Billy’s birth name, the first and closest secret between them both, and Billy hummed, hungry, drinking him down. 

“Still wrong,” Billy told him, once they caught their breath, tucked against Goodnight with his arousal nudged against Goodnight’s hip.

“I know.” Billy had been trying, on and off, to get Goodnight to pronounce his name properly, and it’d been a work in progress for _years_. Billy smirked at him, and slapped away his hand when Goodnight tried to reach for Billy’s buckles. 

“Later,” Billy said, indifferent to his own discomfort, always indifferent to everything that wasn’t Goodnight. It was a humbling thing to face. “When you’re recovered enough to make it worthwhile, old man.”

“You’re a year older than me,” Goodnight retorted, one of their old arguments, the cadence long worn smooth by time, and Billy leaned up for a kiss even as he efficiently set Goodnight’s clothes back to rights. 

They’d go inland for a while, Goodnight decided, while they still had their supplies; they were flush from their share of the Rose Creek payout anyway. In the vastness of the frontier, together, there would be time for tender fragments. For now, his demons were far behind him, out of sight.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Btw, if you liked the Magnificent Seven, I strongly recommend watching the following:  
> The Good, the Bad and the Weird (Has Lee Byung-hun!) My favourite Western.  
> Slow West (Michael Fassbender Western)  
> Hell or High Water (Chris Pine Western)  
> 3:10 to Yuma (Christian Bale/Russell Crowe Western) + The Quick and the Dead (Young!Russell Crowe and bb!Leo diCap Western)  
> Appaloosa (Viggo Mortensen Western) 
> 
> and if you have a PS3/Xbox360, try Red Dead Redemption. A really amazing game :D my fav of that era. 
> 
> Refs:  
> http://lrmonline.com/news/the-lrm-interview-byung-hun-lee-on-playing-the-magnificent-sevens-billy-rocks  
> http://www.legendsofamerica.com/we-slang.html  
> Watching Slow West reminded me that the underwear in the 19th Century was pretty much a button up onesie with an “access hatch” at the butt. XD;;


End file.
